Plants vs Zombies 2 officially arrives on Android, but not through the Play Store [DOWNLOAD]

It’s been a long time coming, but it seems PopCap is finally ready to throw Android users a bone with the release of Plants vs Zombies 2 for Android. Announced earlier this year, the game was initially an iOS exclusive, which needless to say, rubbed many Android users the wrong way (more so after it was announced they were going with the freemium model).

Now, after weeks of waiting, Plants vs Zombies 2 has been officially ported to Android…. there’s only one small catch: this is China-only for now. Yup, Popcap revealed the news via their blog and apparently the limited release might have something to do with them ensuring their servers can handle the load before they go live in other regions. As for everyone outside of Asia, PopCap promises Plants vs Zombies will arrive sometime this fall “no matter where you live,” hinting that a Play Store release is imminent.

If you’ve been brushing up on your Mandarin and don’t mind downloading from non-Google sources, you can give the Chinese version of PvZ2 a whirl. The game is currently available via the Baidu app store with the direct download link to the apk below. Good luck getting the 56MB file to download anytime this century…

Featured

People need to stop feeding this freemium crap anyways. All the better that it’s not on Google play imo.

Ben Kapferer

Well, Google Wallet makes it harder than Apple or Amazon to make purchases (like strict 18+ requirement for users, as well as not even running Google Wallet in many countries). If Google allowed PayPal or even Amazon Checkout as checkout options, I’m sure premium apps would be much more successful.

CrazyPaladin

Making money that’s what. Actually you don’t want to play this version of the game. I mean just check out the permissions it asks. Also it’s heavily modifed to rip (Chinese) people off.

If you search a little bit, you know Popcap along with Tencent lauched a seperate verison of PvZ 2 on Appstore in China, with increased difficulty and force people to buy gems so that you can barely beat the game. And to be fair, it’s Tencent fault, they’re just way too greedy(you think Popcap and EA is greedy enough? Duuuh)

Dan

I’m a few hours in, I haven’t found it too difficult

MK2

Their lead developer must have a serious chip on his shoulder for android.

domatau

this is most likely a business decision by the execs as opposed to the lead developer making the call

MK2

Fine, the execs have a chip on their shoulders. There’s no reason to release in China and not the US except for blatant dislike of Android. They’ve probably got the Android version ready, and are just “punishing” the other team out of spite.

ari_free

You don’t go out of your way to develop an Android version only to say haha you can’t get it.

MK2

Seems like that’s what they’re doing. This BS about servers loads is stupid. Stand up a few more servers and suck it up.

beano311

The server stuff isn’t BS. Look at any MMO launch, consider that most of them probably have a few 100,000 users in the first month and they never launch smoothly. Granted MMOs are way more server intensive, you’re probably underestimating how server intensive PvZ and the fact that instead of a few 100,000 users, PvZ is going to bring a few *million* users in the first few days. Also, the servers they use are pretty damn expensive…

beano311

They did the same thing on iOS with a release in Australia/NZ a month before launching it in the US or worldwide and iOS always gets games before Android, even PvZ1. It is however messed up that the PC version wasn’t released first and that there has been no PC version even formally announced.

ari_free

If you want your games to sell in China, you’ve got to go android.

CrazyPaladin

Actually NO. The iPhone/iPad owning rate in China is so damn high. The problem is piracy. People are willing to pay for 600 buck device but not 1 buck game/app. And Android is actually much eaiser to pirate

chuckkilgore

before I went to China I thought that Installous was the epitome of app piracy, but man now that I live in China, theres like 50 different programs that kick installous’s ass(whether it be apple or android), on top of that you can listen to any song here for free, watch practically any movie for free, when it comes to piracy, China is second to none.

ari_free

“Good luck getting the 56MB file to download anytime this century…”

come on…only 3 minutes or so. I dloaded it

PhishyKris

Worst. Launch. Ever.

Steven Skwarkowski

Worse than SimCity?

https://plus.google.com/108596272537415356460/posts Jason Farrell

Meh. I’ll wait for it to show up in the Play Store… if I remember.

Dan

haha nice, thanks for the tip

Megatron_Don

it did take awhile for me to get it downloaded but i got it. it’s pretty glitchy so i’ll stick with the original until they figure out when the sequel will come to android

PhishyKris

They could have been fine tuning it based on iOS version bugs. I am running it on several iOS devices and its been updated at least 3 times already. They also know that a global Android launch is going to KILL their servers…Google that is.

Covert_Death

Lol its not even going to tickle googles servers haha…

You grossly over estimate and game and atrociously under estimate googles servers if you really think that. The play store won’t even suffer from ping spikes when it launches

Sonelone

You know what did tickle Google’s servers? The Nexus 4. In fact, it tickled the servers pretty hard.

snapper.fishes

Which is pretty disturbing considering that Google never did release the sales figures of the Nexus 4. Let’s face it, while the Nexus 4 received a lot of coverage in the tech blogosphere, the number of Nexus 4 you see during daily commutes is rather low.

perfectlyreasonabletoo

Didn’t try to buy a Nexus 4 on launch day huh?

JMcGee

让我们揭开一些僵尸的驴

Cesar Ortiz

什么

solarcom78

Translation: Let us open up some zombie’s donkey (驴 only means donkey in Chinese)

snapper.fishes

I reckon we understood that much. The real issue here is that JMcGee accidentally used donkey instead of brain, which has similar pronunciations.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=708741524 Robb Nunya

By “we” you mean “you” because “I” didn’t have a clue! :D

chuckkilgore

驴 lǘ (Donkey) 脑 nǎo （Brain）sound nothing alike at least in Mandarin and Sichuan Dialect, I can’t speak for any other dialect though.

Jason Yuen

Freemium was done right in this game. I downloaded this on my ipod and finished it with lots of spare virtual cash to spare. That’s all you’re paying for anyways in this game. If you want the beginning of each level to be easier, then you pay the freemium. If not then just man up and take the challenge of the level’s difficulty. At no point did I feel compelled to pay.

Aliboy

When running the game, it is being detected as a malicious software by my security software (avast)

Dan

same here, I wanted to play this game so I blocked it with just firewall in case.

P. R. Robson

Works perfectly on my Nexus 7. For those having difficulty running the app, make sure you go to Settings > Security >Unknown Sources and put the tick in the box.